Resurrection
by a.lakewood
Summary: Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sam knew he should do something, but all he could manage was watching with horrified fascination as Dean sliced open his hand and pressed the bleeding wound to the stone.
1. Part One

**Title**: Resurrection  
**Author**: alakewood  
**Rating**: PG-13-ish  
**Summary**: _Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sam knew he should do something, but all he could manage was watching with horrified fascination as Dean sliced open his hand and pressed the bleeding wound to the stone._

---

When Sam finally caught up with Dean, he was kneeling in front of a large stone grave marker, chanting in some arcane language that Sam had never heard before.

Dean's head tilted back slightly, his voice getting louder and more persistent as began repeating the incantation. He raised his arms, palms up; then his head bowed and his hands fell to his lap, out of Sam's sight.

As Dean started rocking back and forth, slowly at first, the stone started to glow. He was shouting now. Only a silhouette against the brightness. The light flashed, and Dean suddenly went silent and still – as did everything else.

"Dean?" Sam ventured in a whisper. "Dean."

Dean didn't acknowledge him at all.

But the demon did.

Dean's head turned towards him, and Sam caught a glimpse of the roiling black eyes.

"What the…?" When the hell had _that_ happened? He and Dean had been separated for an hour. Tops.

The demon – or, Dean – looked away. Eyes trained on the marker in front of him first, then the ground. The chanting resumed, very quietly, and he brought his arms out to his sides. Left hand palm-up again, right hand holding what Sam recognized as a dagger when the blade gleamed in what moonlight was cast on the small clearing in the graveyard.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sam knew he should do something, but all he could manage was watching with horrified fascination as Dean sliced open his hand and pressed the bleeding wound to the stone. A low rumbling started almost immediately, then symbols started to faintly appear on the smooth surface of the granite.

The light that emanated from the marker, this time, started out so intense that it blinded Sam. His eyes had barely adjusted to the brilliance when he saw Dean plunge the dagger into his stomach. "Dean!"

Just as Sam reached him, Dean's head fell back, mouth open wide as the demon, a substance thicker and darker than smoke, left his body. It entered the stone through the light-etched symbols and everything went dark and quiet again.

---

"Why can't we find a job somewhere where the temperature is above freezing-my-ass-off? Like, in Florida or California. Somewhere with a beach?" Dean questioned, clearly irritated, as he turned the heater on full-blast.

"Next time," Sam said with a grin, flipping through loose sheets of paper in his lap. "I'm not so sure this is another Woman in White that we're dealing with. I mean, nobody's died. People just keep seeing her."

"So we're doing this why?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know. Just thought that, maybe, we could have an easy job every now and then. One that's not gonna end up with bruises or broken bones. Just put her to rest."

Dean nodded. "But we couldn't wait until, oh, _after_ this ice age was over?"

Laughing, Sam responded, "Don't be such a wuss, Dean."

"Wuss? I swear to God that my balls have retracted up into my body so that they don't fall off." Under his breath, he added, "Bitch."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Jerk."

"Okay. So, fill me in."

"Over the past seventy-odd years, people have been encountering a young woman in a white dress on the side of this road. Uh…" He shuffled through a couple papers. "Archer Avenue. Um, people have just seen her, others have picked her up and given her a ride. Once they get near this cemetery, she either gets out and disappears, or vanishes as they're passing. Legend is, in the 30s, this girl gets into a fight with her boyfriend at a dance and tries to hitchhike down the road; ends up the victim of a hit-and-run. They call her Resurrection Mary."

---

Sam clutched at the front of Dean's coat in an effort to hold his brother upright. "Hey," he said, panic gripping his chest. "_Hey!_ Look at me, Dean. Look at me."

Dean's head bobbed a few times before he leaned forward and rested his forehead against Sam's. His cold hand curled around Sam's neck. "So much for an easy job, huh?" His attempt at a laugh sounded like he was choking. He tried to stand, but collapsed into Sam instead.

"Dean." Sam hauled him up, careful of the stab wound to his stomach. "We gotta go." He cast a glance to the stone marker, which looked just as it had when he'd first seen it.

"We gotta find that demon, Sam," Dean said urgently.

"No. We gotta get you to a hospital."

They only made it a few steps before Dean doubled over in pain, falling to his hands and knees. A hand went to his stomach – blood was starting to seep through his jacket. A couple droplets stained the white snow. "Sammy, _run_."

"What?" Sam crouched down next to him.

Dean, grunting with effort, got to his feet, pulling Sam up, as the rumbling started again. "It _opened_ something."

Sam hooked an arm under Dean's and around his back, looking over his shoulder as they headed out of the graveyard. The symbols glowed in the stone and the ground in front of it began to crumble away. When they got to the car, Sam was still staring.

"Sam. _Sammy!_" Dean slapped a hand on the roof of the car. "_Let's go._"

The entire cemetery was alit with the strange bluish-green glow. Sam turned to Dean, whose skin was far too pale and was breathing unevenly.

"Sam, _drive!_"


	2. Part Two

Title: Resurrection, Part 2/2  
Author: alakewood  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: _"I didn't sell my soul for you to lose yours, Sammy."  
_Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing.

---

Dean sighed as he started flipping through the channels yet again. There wasn't a single damn thing on the limited cable access their current motel had. He was tempted to see what the pay-per-view offered. Frustrated, he tossed the remote onto the bedside table. "Anything of interest, Sam?"

Sam was sitting only a couple of feet away at the wobbly table, laptop perched in one corner, John's journal just within arm's reach, and the rest of the surface covered with the loose sheets of information that Sam had printed off at some library. He scrawled notes in the margin of one of the sheets. "Not much more than what I've already read. Might have a name, though."

Dean nodded to himself a few times. "Cool." He reached for the remote again.

--

"Dean? You doin' okay?" Sam glanced over to his brother, reached for him and grasped his forearm.

Swallowing thickly, Dean just nodded. His teeth were clenched, muscles in his jaw twitching. He was breathing hard now.

Sam wasn't sure where there was a hospital – they weren't in Chicago that often. It wasn't like he was just going to stop for directions with Dean very nearly bleeding out in the passenger seat of the impala. He just stayed on Archer Avenue and headed for the middle of the city. Once on Michigan, he saw signs for a Mercy Hospital. Getting to the hospital, getting Dean into the emergency room – it was all a blur. He paced the hallway after the nurses rushed Dean away on a gurney. He suddenly stopped, catching sight of his bloody hands. If he lost Dean now…

--

They parked in the cemetery lot just as the sun was starting to set.

"Look at this," Sam said, stopping at the wrought-iron fence.

"What the hell is it?" Dean asked, inspecting the small ridges on the surface of the metal. "Are those…"

"Fingerprints? Yeah. The legend says that Mary did it, just holding on to the bars."

"A ghost melting fingerprints into iron?"

"I know." Sam's grin was practically from ear to ear. He brushed his thumb over the marks.

"She musta been _pissed_." Dean walked through the gate. "So. Meet you back here in…what? An hour?"

"Uh, yeah." He was squinting into the distance, corners of his eyes wrinkled and his nose scrunched, only half paying attention as Dean headed into the cemetery by himself.

--

"On May 29, 1953, these two men were the first to climb Mount Everest," Alex Trebek said on the TV.

Dean shook his head, hands twisting in the hospital blanket over his lap. "Who are Rocky and Bullwinkle?"

"Hilary and Norgay," Sam answered from the doorway. He glanced up at his brother, then looked away again. "How're you doing?"

"Considering I just about eviscerated myself?" He shrugged a little. "Not to shabby."

"Really, Dean."

"I'll live." He offered a small smile which seemed to say, _if only for a little while longer, anyway._

"What happened last night?" Sam moved across the room to Dean's bedside, pulled up a chair to sit down.

"I'm not sure. I mean, I remember parts of it, like it was a dream or something. I left you at the gate, then started looking for that chick's grave. And I remember stabbing myself in the gut. The middle is fuzzy." He paused. "How'd you find me?"

--

The temperature had dropped close to ten degrees since the sun went down. Sam rubbed his gloved hands together and pulled his knit hat over his ears again. He'd been waiting at the cemetery gate for twenty minutes and Dean was still a no-show. He'd give him another five before-

Something white and almost shimmering, just out of his periphery, caught his eye. He turned, and there she stood. "Jess?" He couldn't mistake her for anybody else.

She didn't respond, just held out a hand, gesturing for him to follow her. Her eyes – Jess's eyes – pleaded with him.

Sam followed, marveling at how much she hadn't changed since he saw her standing on that street corner just after she died. He had to wonder if, maybe, the reason the descriptions of Resurrection Mary varied so much was because she showed herself differently to different people. Like how she appeared to him as Jess. He knew it couldn't really be Jess – she was at peace. It had to be some sort of ploy to get him to follow her. And, obviously, it was working.

Mary stopped at a small grove of trees. She inclined her head to the left, blinking slowly, blonde hair cascading about her bare shoulders.

Sam heard a familiar voice – _Dean_ – speaking softly just beyond the tree line. He started for the clearing, then turned back to get one last look at Mary. But she was gone. He left the grove and saw Dean kneeling in front of a big, granite grave marker.

--

"Dean, I really don't think you should-" Sam interrupted himself with a huff, knowing that there was no way he'd convince Dean to go back to motel to rest much less go back to hospital.

It was hard to look at him – buried within one of Sam's hoodies, which he had borrowed until he found time to thoroughly clean the blood from his leather jacket – because he looked just as he had the other two times he'd almost died. His skin was so pale, he had dark circles under his eyes.

"Let's just go to Bobby's. Take a few weeks off."

"We have to send it back," he stated, slowly hobbling towards the grave marker the demon had opened.

There was something about his voice… "Do you know what it released?" Dean's silence was more than enough of an answer. "Dean."

"Doesn't matter. We're gonna send it back. It'll be real easy – just a binding spell." He produced a couple sheets of paper from the front pouch of the sweatshirt. "It'll take five minutes, tops."

"What is it, Dean?"

When they came to the marker, Dean unfolded his papers and pulled a small knife from his pocket. "He's called Eligor – goes by a couple other names, too. A Great Duke of Hell."

Sam shrugged, forehead wrinkled as he tried to think of why any of it was particularly important. "Why summon him? Why'd he pick you?"

"Blood of a condemned man is the key to the ritual. And he knew a way to get me out of my deal."

"What was the catch?"

"The guy's like a frickin' warlord. He would void my contract if you'd agree to fulfill the Yellow-Eyed Bastard's prophecy. You lead their demon army, and I get to live the rest of my life." He paused. "I didn't sell my soul for you to lose yours, Sammy."

Dean sliced his palm open and pressed it to the stone, and started to read the binding spell. The demon briefly appeared, a glimmer in the sunlight, a knight on a winged horse.

"I'm not losing you to them," Dean said, starting back to the car. "There's gotta be another way."

---

_fin_


	3. Revisited: Part One

**Title**: Resurrection: Revisited [1/?]  
**Author:** alakewood  
**Warnings**: Spoilers for _AHBL_ and _No Rest for the Wicked._  
**Rating**: PG  
**Word** **Count**: ~760  
**Summary**: I've never been content with how this story ended and it's taken me a while to convince my muse to return to it. Picking up shortly after where we left off, we find Sam going back to the cemetery, where he encounters Eligor.  
**Disclaimer**: As always, I own nothing.

**oxoxo**

Smoke from some unseen fire made his eyes water and, combined with the stench of sulfur, made his lungs burn. Made his chest feel heavy. A hollow thudding began somewhere behind him, quietly at first but quickly grew louder. Sam was almost certain he was dreaming when the half-skeletal horse trotted through the smoke, towering above him, a dark-suited knight on its back.

But this wasn't a dream – Sam had returned to Resurrection Cemetery to face the demon that had attempted to strike a deal with his brother. He was standing just outside a police-taper barrier that had been erected a few yards beyond the granite marker where he'd found Dean days earlier, earth crumbled away to reveal a deep pit, Dean's bloody handprint contrasting starkly with the pale stone.

The horse snorted, tearing Sam away from his thoughts and back to the present. He raised his eyes to the demon's face, partially hidden by the visor of his helmet. "Samuel Winchester," his guttural voice said, sounding almost pleased.

"I thought...I thought Dean had...sent you back?" Sam didn't like the way his voice wavered, hinting at the fear constricting his chest like the thick smoke that swirled about him like fog.

"I forgot how silly humans can be. Did you really think it would be that easy to get rid of me?" Eligor laughed, a low, gravelly sound. "I'm a Duke of _Hell_, boy. These small-time binding rituals don't work on demons like me. Remember Azazel? Our power is too immense to be bound by simple spells and blood-letting."

"But you disappeared."

"Just a little trick. Let your brother believe he'd been successful at containing me. But you, Samuel, you didn't trust your fate – or your brother's – to some quick and careless translation done by a machine. I knew you'd return, and here you are."

"I'm not making any deals with you."

Eligor chuckled again, the sound like boulders grinding together. "Then why did you come back, boy? You can't send me back to Hell. Your brother opened the portal. Only he can close it. But I'm not going anywhere until I get what I came for."

"I won't do it." His voice wavered again. "I can't."

"Come on, Sam. How much time does Dean have left? Five months? Four? You think you're going to find a deal as good as this one, you're wrong. I'm your last hope, boy. Face it, you turn this down, _you'll_ be the one sealing your brother's fate."

That was a low blow, harsh but true. There didn't seem to another way, didn't seem to be time to _find_ another way. "So, if I agree to this...what happens to Dean? You void the deal and he ends up dead anyway?"

Eligor shrugged, making the iron plates of his darkly burnished armor shriek. "Eventually. And probably at your hand. But at least he'll have a fighting chance. Of course, the alternative is declining my offer and allowing him to be torn to pieces by hellhounds. It's up to you, Samuel."

"What happens to _me?_"

Eligor sighed, like distant thunder, low and rumbling, and Sam could imagine the demon rolling his eyes as though he were enduring the burdensome questions of a child. "You will become what you've always been destined to be: commander of Azazel's army. After you have fully accepted your duty and have been thoroughly trained, you will command me as well."

"I will command you?" Sam echoed disbelievingly.

"And my sixty legions."

"Command you against what?"

"We will rise up from our infernal dungeon and lay siege to humanity, taking this world for our own. You will lead us in battle against the armies of Heaven and we will prevail."

Sam's stomach dropped, twisted. There was no way he could do it, no way he could go against everything he believed and become the thing he'd spent his whole life trying to kill.

"All I need is your word, Samuel. No blood, no ritual, no sacrifice. Just your word."

"I...I need to..."

"What? Discuss this with your brother?" the demon questioned, almost sounding amused.

"Yes. I can't just- just leave him. He needs to know-"

"He needs to know _nothing._"

"If I agree to this, it needs to be on my terms."

"Very well. I shall await you here. You have twenty-four hours."

Sam watched as the demon and his steed shimmered darkly, then dissipated with the smoke.


End file.
